Читать книгу The Million Pound Deposit - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 5

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On the afternoon following Doctor Hisedale's somewhat peculiar dinner party at the Milan Hotel, Mr. Henry Hogg, Manager of the International Safe Deposit Company, Queen Victoria Street, returned from his luncheon just before half-past two, entered his office by the private way, and rang for his secretary.

"Any callers or telephone messages, Skinner?" he enquired.

"There are five gentlemen waiting to see you, sir," the young man announced.

Mr. Hogg was somewhat startled. Five prospective clients so early in the afternoon was, to say the least of it, unusual.

"Send them here," he directed, "in the order of their arrival."

"They all came together, sir."

Mr. Hogg was more surprised than ever. He leaned back in his chair and looked at his secretary over the top of his pince-nez.

"What sort of people are they?" he demanded.

The young man appeared vague. The answer to the question required a little more imagination than he possessed.

"Ordinary city gentlemen, they might be, sir," he reported. "One of them has the look of an artist. He is untidy about the head and kind of nervous in his manner, and I should say another was an American."

"Well, show them in," Mr. Hogg enjoined—"that is, if they all want to come in."

"I rather fancy that they do, sir," his subordinate confided. "They are all sitting close together and once, when the bell rang, they all got up. It seems as though they don't want to lose sight of one another."

Mr. Hogg, considerably intrigued, waved his secretary towards the door, drew the plan of vacant safes towards him, and settled himself down in his chair. Presently there were footsteps outside and the door was thrown open.

"The five gentlemen, sir," Skinner announced.

They filed in one by one, and from the first, they gave Mr. Hogg the idea of men who were filled with distrust of one another. Doctor Hisedale led the way. Mr. Thomas Ryde, with a small packet under his arm, came next; flanking him were Mr. Huneybell and Mr. Hartley Wright; and bringing up the rear was De Brest, half a head taller than any one of them.

"Gentlemen," the Manager of the International Safe Deposit Company said, rising to his feet, "I understand that you wish to see me on business. I am sorry that I have not five chairs to offer you. Will you kindly dispose of yourselves as well as you can. What can I do for you?"

Mr. Thomas Ryde disclosed himself as spokesman. He adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles firmly upon his nose, selected the most comfortable chair, and crossed his neatly trousered legs.

"We are sorry to inflict such a visitation upon you, sir," he apologised, "but the fact of it is that we are all equally interested in the business which has brought us here. Unfortunately, too, we all appear to be inspired with a profound mistrust of one another. That is the reason why we are all surrounding your desk. My name is Thomas Ryde. The gentleman on my right is Doctor Hisedale, whose name is probably known to you. Doctor Hisedale is a very celebrated scientist. Next to him is Mr. Huneybell, my assistant in a small business. Behind him, the Baron Sigismund de Brest, the well known Dutch banker and financier, and the gentleman beyond, who has seated himself between me and the door, is Mr. Hartley K. Wright."

Mr. Hogg acknowledged the introductions in courteous fashion.

"If, as you say, you are here on business," he observed, "am I to understand that you all wish to rent a safe?"

"We require only one," Mr. Ryde replied—"the strongest and best that you are able to offer us."

The Manager smiled indulgently.

"You probably know all about us," he said. "We are the one company in the world who is able to offer its clients perfect security. Our safes are all precisely the same, and any one of them is better than the safe of any other make in the world. There is no power on earth which nature or science has yet evolved which could open one of them when it is finally closed. They are, to be brief, invulnerable. Our system of watchmen, robot and human, our electric alarms—"

"Quite so," Mr. Ryde interrupted politely. "We have considered your announcements and your specifications, and we are all agreed that you are able to offer perfect security. Our trouble, however, which I shall presently disclose, lies in another direction. Let me first, if I may, ask you a question. Is it necessary to divulge the nature of any packet we leave with you?"

"Not in the least," Mr. Hogg assured him. "The only thing concerning which I must satisfy myself is that its contents are not of an explosive character."

"It will be necessary to open the package to decide that?" Doctor Hisedale intervened.

"Not at all. I can decide by the weight."

"Very well then," Thomas Ryde continued. "Here is our difficulty. We have, with one other, whom you have not seen, and to whom we will allude as Mr. X., become partners in a certain enterprise. We are almost strangers to one another, for the enterprise demanded varied gifts. Hence our little association. We succeeded. The treasure of which we have become possessed is worth a fortune to each one, but it is not immediately realisable. A key to the fortune lies in the package which I am embracing—a fact which you have doubtless already surmised."

"It seemed to me highly probable," Mr. Hogg admitted.

"Do not think too hardly of us, sir, but the result of our labours is worth a million pounds, taking it at a very low valuation. Now, I ask you, is this mutual mistrust altogether inexplicable? Are there any four or five average men who could be brought together in any walk of life who would be willing to trust each other for the sixth part of a million pounds? I put the question to you for your consideration."

"I see your point," the other murmured. "To put it baldly, you can't make up your minds who is to be trusted with the key."

"You are amazingly right," was the prompt assent.

"You could each have a key if you liked," was Mr. Hogg's tentative suggestion.

A little ripple of mirth, half cynical, half genuine, flickered across the five intent faces.

"Which of us, do you fancy, sir," Thomas Ryde asked, "would sleep peacefully in his bed with the full knowledge that four others possessed the key to our treasure chamber, and that even at that moment the safe might be empty? We are human beings, Mr. Hogg, and we have already spoken of our mistrust of one another. Your suggestion does nothing to solve our difficulty."

"Have you thought out any way of dealing with it yourselves?"

"Roughly, this is my idea," Thomas Ryde explained, taking a sheet of business note paper from a rack upon the table. "You give us a formal receipt for our deposit, and hold the key of the safe here yourself. The receipt then should be torn into six pieces, two of which come to me—one for Mr. X. and one for myself—my friends here take the other four, and you should deliver up the key only when the receipt in toto, pasted together, or still in pieces, should be handed to you in its entirety."

Mr. Hogg deliberated for a few moments.

"It would not be necessary then for all of you to present the portions of the receipt in person?"

"Certainly not," Thomas Ryde replied. "Circumstances might, in any case, render that impracticable. One of us might be dead, in the hospital, or—er—in any other form of confinement. The only point, so far as you are concerned, is that the six original fragments of paper must be produced and recognised by you as constituting the original receipt. You then hand over the key, and your responsibilities are at an end."

Mr. Hogg leaned back in his chair and dangled his pince-nez by its cord. He had already made up his mind that the contents of the package probably consisted of spurious bank notes, or of jewelry forming the proceeds of some cunningly devised burglary. His own responsibilities in the matter, however, were not onerous and the letting of a safe was not an everyday affair.

"This is the most unique proposition which has ever been made to me," he confided. "I should like to know a little more about you, gentleman. A packet worth a million pounds is no light charge."

"On behalf of myself and my associates," Thomas Ryde admitted, "I will be frank. We are a company of adventurers."

There was a murmur of irritated and angry dissent, which the self-appointed confessor ignored.

"But," he continued, "more or less honest adventurers. We have risked everything we have in the world to obtain the contents of that package. My name, as I have told you, is Thomas Ryde. I have a commission agent's business in connection with the sale of yarns and artificial silks near Moorgate Street Station. I also consider myself an expert accountant, and I have been engaged at various times to conduct a campaign of economy in the office departments of certain firms whose expenses have been out of proportion to their profits. Mr. Huneybell, the gentleman on my left, who obstinately refuses the ministrations of a barber, is my clerk and town traveller in the business to which I first alluded. Doctor Hisedale is a famous scientist who is over here making a few final experiments in a London laboratory before he joins a firm of German manufacturers. Mr. Hartley Wright here is an American man of affairs of good standing. Finally, there is the Baron de Brest, whose name and position in the banking world should be sufficient guarantee for us. We are not men of straw, Mr. Hogg."

"Can I see the package?" that gentleman enquired.

His friends formed a little semicircle round Thomas Ryde as he deposited his burden, wrapped in brown paper and sealed in many places, upon the table. Mr. Hogg felt the weight of it speculatively and listened for a moment. It was not nearly heavy enough for an infernal machine and, so far as he could gather, contained nothing but papers. He decided that his first surmise with regard to its contents was correct.

"Very well, gentlemen," he agreed. "Our charge for the rent of a safe for three months—we do not let them for a shorter period—will be fifty pounds. If you will hand over the money, I will prepare you the official receipt."

Thomas Ryde produced ten five-pound notes, made a memorandum of the disbursement in his diary, and glanced through the document approvingly. He then laid it upon the table and rose to his feet.

"I shall now ask this last service of you, sir," he said. "Tear that sheet, if you please, into six pieces. Give me two and every one else one."

Mr. Hogg occupied himself in the manner desired, placed each fragment of the mutilated receipt in an envelope, and handed them over.

"I don't mind admitting," he said good-humouredly, "that I have had some strange clients, but I think you gentlemen are the strangest of all. If you will follow me, we will now deposit your treasure."

He touched a bell, and, escorted by a couple of burly-looking officials, who had more the appearance of prison warders than custodians of a civil undertaking, the five men were piloted to the subterranean quarters of the building. They passed through door after door of solid steel, each with a different type of lock, until they found themselves in a square apartment, even the floor of which was of some tempered metal. The safes were built into the wall all around and each had a number in luminous letters painted above it. Mr. Hogg paused before number 14 and inserted the key in a small lock.

"Listen, gentlemen," he enjoined, looking around.

He turned the key once. There was a hideous jangling of bells.

"At the present moment," he continued, standing with the key still in his hand, "a purple light is showing in the main office and in my own room. Now once more."

He turned the key again. The bells ceased, but a long, shrill whistle rang through the whole place. The door of the safe opened, the packet was deposited, and pandemonium ceased.

"You may rest convinced now, gentlemen," Mr. Hogg assured them, as he led the way to the lift, "that your million-pound deposit is as safe as human beings can make it."

He escorted his unusual clients to the light of day and watched them linger for a moment upon the threshold of the entrance hall. They were apparently men of unusual habits, for they indulged in no form of leave-taking, but all melted away in different directions. Mr. Ryde hailed a passing taxicab, and the Baron followed his example. Huneybell joined a little group who were waiting at the next corner for a bus. Doctor Hisedale, after a few seconds' hesitation, proceeded on foot towards the Embankment. Mr. Hartley K. Wright lurched steadily towards the City. The partnership was momentarily dissolved. Each member of it breathed a trifle more freely when he thought of that roll of papers reposing in the grim inaccessibility of Safe Deposit Box number 14.